Tom Hancock sits in the post office window at Bair's Grocery Store on Wednesday, Sept. 2, 2015. Hancock is closing the store at Campbell and West Plainview Road after 39 years. Nathan Papes/News-Leader

Sometime on Saturday night — maybe about 9 o’clock — after 39 years, Tom Hancock will lock the doors at Bair’s Grocery for the last time.

He has spent most of his life ensuring that the shelves are full. Not anymore. A few months ago, he agreed to sell his building and the land to a bank.

The 20-percent-off signs went up; he stopped re-ordering; and at age 70, he finally lifted his foot off the gas and is coasting toward retirement.

“It is kind of sad,” he tells me. “It’s a little depressing to see the end. But on the other hand, I look forward to having time to enjoy things and being able to get up and if I want to go fishing — I can just go fishing.”

It’s been a demanding job, he says: seven days a week, 12 hours a day.

“He has spent his life there,” says Rosemary, his wife of 50 years.

Bair’s Grocery has been a landmark at South Campbell Avenue and West Plainview Road since George and Jean Bair started the business in 1965. This is the same family that currently owns four Bair’s sports grills: three in Springfield and one in Nixa. For decades, the grocery store was the last stop for those heading from Springfield to Table Rock Lake.

George and Jean Bair converted the vacant Plainview Elementary School — which once stood at the intersection — into their home. The house stood next to the grocery store.

That connection to the school made the store something special, something more than just a place to buy milk or batteries or night crawlers, Rosemary tells me.

“There were people in the neighborhood who shopped at the grocery store who had gone to the school next to it where the owners lived,” she says.

The Bairs sold the house to Tom and Rosemary in 1985.

Tom took the old schoolhouse down. He needed more gas pumps to compete against corporate competition at the intersection. He had one pump at the time and added six. Across the street today is a Kum & Go with 10 pumps.

Tom is at the store daily. Most revenue comes from sales inside the store, not from gas sales. You can buy beer, tomatoes, a bologna sandwich for lunch, biscuits and gravy for breakfast or fishing lures.

“I always left the serious tackle business to Johnny Morris to take care of,” he says.

A work ethic

The lives of Tom Hancock and Rosemary Erwin intersected when they were both 19 and working at the old IGA Grocery on South Glenstone Avenue and Cherry Street. She handled the books and he handled the produce.

“He had quite a work ethic,” she says. “It was noticeable to me. It was noticeable to everybody who worked with him.”

They married and, later, with two young children, they bought Bair’s Grocery in 1976 from Don and Mary Lovett.

“Bair’s was the only thing at the intersection,” Tom recalls. “This was all farmland.”

Regular customer John Vorhees, 85, goes back that far.

“I have known Tom ever since he has been in business,” Vorhees says. “If you ever needed anything, Tom was there.”

Tom tells me that men who look defeated by life have come into the store over the years asking for a free tank of gas. They’ll tell him they’ve got a job lined up. An interview to go to. All they need is that gas. And they promise they’ll return Friday to pay him back — but don’t.

“Sometimes you lose,” Tom says.

But that’s OK. It’s been a good living that’s allowed him to send two children through college. He and Rosemary have five grandchildren.

The accident

I sit with Tom at a small table in the store. He is soft-spoken with a gentle sense of humor that, at times, seems to surprise even him. He has dark splotches on his old arms from the daily bumps and bruises of running a grocery store.

Rosa Amman, 74, stops by to talk to Tom. She was born in Italy, lives nearby and is a regular customer.

“He is the man in the post office. I’m gonna miss him.”

For 30 years, Tom has operated a contract U.S. Postal station in his store. About 700 pieces of mail and two or three shopping carts worth of packages are dropped off daily at the store, says Robin Dhondt, a U.S. Postal manager. The station will close Friday.

Tom says he’s not calling it quits because of the competition from the Kum & Go across the street. He’s had corporate competition for roughly 30 years. A different Kum & Go at the intersection came and went, he says. Business is as good as ever.

“When I bought the store I had $267 in daily sales. Now it’s $15,000 a day.”

Now is the time because he’s old and tired. He’d like to share more of his life with his five grandchildren. He’d like to be free to actually attend a Sunday morning worship service at his church, Campbell Methodist.

His first serious thought of retirement was in 2010, when he was seriously injured while returning from a Canadian fishing trip. He was in a recreational vehicle that left the road during a thunderstorm near Sioux Falls, South Dakota. His back was broken in two places. He suffered fractured ribs and a fractured skull.

“He was in a world of hurt,” Rosemary says. It took months of recovery.

His injuries were so serious that he was 5 foot 7 before the accident. He says that after his surgeries, he was 5 foot 4.

“It took a toll on me physically,” Tom says. “You just can’t do the things that you used to do.”

The store’s fixtures will be auctioned Oct. 3. Tom would not say what the new owner will do with the property — other than that it will no longer be a grocery store.

Saturday night will be bittersweet, Tom says. But it’s time.

“I have enjoyed every minute of it,” he says.

These are the views of Steve Pokin, the News-Leader's columnist. Pokin has been at the paper three years and over the course of his career has covered just about everything — from courts and cops to features and fitness. He can be reached at 836-1253, spokin@gannett.com, on Twitter @stevepokinNL or by mail at 651 N. Boonville, Springfield, MO 65806.